Replies to '04/01 The Superbug'

Quote From: marylahree

 I don't have this particular superbug but, I do have chronic, resistant infection.  I have a rare autoimmune disease (or disorder) called necrobiosis lipoidica diabeticorum (NLD).  Though I am not diabetic, mine is a severe case of NL(D).  My lower legs look as if they have been horribly burned, and they ulcerate over and again.  It seems that each ulcer is more difficult to see healed than the last, with some ulcers having already remained open for well over a year.  It has reached the point where the ulcers seem to stay infected.

Modern medicine knows no cure for NL(D).  There aren't even any adequately effective treatments to hault the progression of NL(D) through modern medicine, or so it seems.  So I live with a certain amout of concern that I could loose leg or life to complications such as infection.  And in fact, I have had close calls.   Beginning in late  2005, I was started back on antibiotics for a staph infection called psuedomonas aeruginosa.  However, months of IV antibiotics failed to cure the infection.    I ended up becoming an experimental patient at a clinic, where I was given a type of silver (yeah, the metal) by IV.  I was essentially told by my doctor(s) there, that silver has long been known as an agent that isn't staph-germ friendly.

Along with treatment to improve the health of my compromised immune system, the silver was, as I said, given to me by IV at the clinic.  But, not even strong IV antibiotics and the silver, given internally, were enough to rid the ulcers themselves of the infection.   That, though I suspect that the combined treatments at the clinic did prevent the infection from going systemic and, I certainly came home feeling far more strength than I'd had when I arrived at the clinic some six weeks earlier.

The ulcers on my legs continued to enlarge.  I feared I would soon loose my legs to amputation and, based on comments he made to me at the time, so did my primary physician.  But even if I would survive surgery for amputation, my NL(D) degenerated skin does not heal well.  If I wasn't a candidate for skin graftsa few years earlier, I doubted I would heal well from a far more serious surgical wound.  I felt my last hope was to return to a specialist (in the case of NL(D) a dermatologist) to see if, by some answered prayer, technology had made any advancements since my last visit.

Lucky for me there had been advancements.  A dermatologist from a university hospital prescribed a silver dressing for the infected ulcers.  She explained to the effect that, antibiotics are an enemy to bacteria unless it becomes resistant to them but that, silver is an environment that most staph infection cannot survive contact with.  That leaves me wondering if it could work on wounds of THIS superbug as it did for me in the case of pseudomonas aeruginosa. 

Yet it might not matter if it would work, unless health insurance companies are willing to cover the cost of such dressings.  They are expensive.  Presently denied coverage of them by my current health insurance company, my legs are re-infected some other types of bacteria, and I suppose I am as worried as those of you who have the superbug.  I can really relate and you have my deepest sympathy.